Computers are powerful tools of use in storing and providing access to vast amounts of information, while databases are a common mechanism for storing information on computer systems while providing easy access to users. Typically, a database is an organized collection of information stored as “records” having “fields” of information (e.g., a restaurant database may have a record for each restaurant in a region, where each record contains fields describing characteristics of the restaurant, such as name, address, type of cuisine, and the like).
In operation, a database management system frequently needs to retrieve data from or persist data to storage devices such as disks. Unfortunately, access to such storage devices can be somewhat slow. To speed up access to data, databases typically employ a “cache” or “buffer cache” which is a section of relatively faster memory (e.g., random access memory (RAM)) allocated to store recently used data objects. Memory is typically provided on semiconductor or other electrical storage media and is coupled to a CPU (central processing unit) via a fast data bus which enables data maintained in memory to be accessed more rapidly than data stored on disks.
One approach that may be taken when attempting to solve this problem is to store all the information in the database in memory, however as memory provided on computer systems has a limited size there are a number of obstacles that must be faced when attempting to handle databases of a larger scale.
As such, there is a continuing need for improved methods of storing and retrieving data at high speeds at a large scale.